Field of the Invention
The present invention has an object of providing a sensor interface device, measurement information communication system, measurement information communication method, and non-transitory computer readable medium for transmitting information measured by sensors, etc.
Related Art
The matter of measuring vibrations, etc. of a machine tool by sensors, and using the measured information in a higher-order device is commonly carried out. In this case, it is necessary to send the information measured with sensors to the higher-order device via a network.
In this point, in recent years, the number of sensors has been increasing accompanying the spread of the internet of things (IoT). In addition, the acquisition needs related to sensor data of high-frequency are rising, as in failure prediction using AE (Acoustic Emission). For these reasons, it is predicted that the sensor data flowing on the network will increase in an FA (Factory Automation) environment, etc., and compress communication band.
Moreover, in the case of aiming to make some kind of determination, obtain knowledge, or the like from the sensor data (for example, making a failure prediction, or the like) rather than using sensor data in control, it is often better to obtain only characteristic quantities having higher abstraction level, with the data itself measured with sensors (i.e. raw data) being unnecessary.
Taking account of this point, Patent Document 1 describes technology that transmits not the data itself measured with sensors, but rather metadata generated based on this data measured with sensors. More specifically, a sensor node described in Patent Document 1 includes a sensor measuring a physical quantity, a data acquisition part that samples the physical quantity measured by the sensor at a predetermined frequency to generate measurement data, a control part that performs processing on the measurement data generated by the data acquisition part, and a radio communication part that sends data based on commands of the control unit. In such a configuration, the control unit generates metadata formed by extracting a summary of the measurement data. Then, the generated metadata is sent by the radio communication part.
With the configuration described in Patent Document 1, it is in this way possible to reduce the sent data volume, and ensure the communication band on the network, by sending metadata formed by extracting a summary, rather than the data itself measured with sensors.
Patent Document 1:    Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2009-169888